By David

Many Swimwatch stories discuss matters that concern elite swimming. We have written about swim suits, international championships, Mare Nostrum swim meets and national coaches. My favorite coaching is working with swimmers like Rhi Jeffrey, Oswaldo Quevedo, Jane Copland, Toni Jeffs, John Foster and Nichola Chellingworth. The revelation that, even these World class competitors were all once in someone’s Confident Beginners class, will surprise no one. In recognition of that fact, every day, I make a point of taking our juniors for the stroke correction portion of their practice.

For several reasons, it is well worth the twenty minutes. You become a better coach. A teacher once told me that elementary school teachers are better at teaching than university tutors. Teaching junior students requires more skill. At this level the task is not only to transfer information, but to transfer information in a manner that instills learning skills at the same time. That’s true for swimming too. Taking junior swimmers requires better explanations. For Rhi, “Catch a bit deeper,” is sufficient. She knows what it means and how to follow the instruction. She is also physically able to do it and even understands why it is important – and all without a long explanation from me. For juniors, good teaching requires that all that information is explained. Which means the coach has to know and think through the how and the why as well. And therein lies an exercise that is good for the coaching soul. I think I’ve answered more interesting whys and hows from juniors than from all the Rhis of the world.

Besides making the coach explain stroke techniques better, teaching young swimmers is a constant reminder of the breadth of the swimming curriculum. When all you do is coach Jane Copland type swimmers, it’s very easy to forget how much needs to be learned. I was at a swim meet with our junior swimmers this weekend. One of our eight year olds was not only swimming in his first backstroke race but ended up winning it as well. Before the race I was helping him find his lane and prepare for the right race. Americans do not bother with all that marshalling stuff so popular in the rest of the world. At big meets here you’d never get through them if you tried to carefully marshal all the swimmers. As we stood waiting for the start the eight year old asked, “How soon after I dive in do I roll over and start swimming backstroke?” Before you think that we must have omitted to cover backstroke starts, I should explain that backstroke starts had been taught on several occasions. This particular eight year old had however assumed that our in-the-water tuition had been to avoid getting out of the pool during what has been a cold Florida winter. Moments like that make you realize how much detail needs to be taught. And even then I bet there are a thousand small things you will miss. There is nothing like a few disqualifications to make you realize just how much has been missed.

The photograph below was taken at the same swim meet and is a classic illustration of this point.

It shows the start of the 10 and under boys 50 freestyle. Three of the boys in the photograph are members of our team. For one of them it was his first race, for another his second and for the third his fifth or sixth event. I’m very loyal to all the members of our team. However in this case I have to acknowledge we are still a little short of Phelps’ type starts. The really good thing about all this though is that progress is so obvious and exciting. From the uncontrolled tumbles shown in this photograph to well honed dives is not a long process and happens soon enough. We hope the three boys involved keep this picture as a reminder of how far they have progressed. We hope you enjoy the photograph and thank one of our mothers, Lori, for the skill and luck she had in capturing the moment.

By David

I see the New Zealand Short Course Meters Championships are being held this week. They are only about halfway through so it’s a bit early to form an opinion on quality of the event. However, three items have caught my attention.

I was pleased to see that Melissa Ingram is back competing. She won the 400 freestyle on the first night of the Championships in 4.05. Regular readers of Swimwatch may remember our story about last year’s World Cup meets in Moscow, Stockholm and Berlin. I was delighted to be there and see a New Zealand athlete out there, on her own, taking on the world’s best swimmers and winning. In everything Ingram did she was a fine ambassador, carrying on a proud tradition of competing anywhere against anybody characteristic of New Zealand’s best athletes. Her performances in the World Cup series would have made her my first choice for the Beijing Olympic team. Instead of that Swimming New Zealand insisted that she swim some very fast qualifying time at the selection trials. That requirement works well in Australia and the United States. New Zealand however is not so overwhelmed with swimming talent it can afford to copy their cut throat selection policy. The way swimming does it, Peter Snell would never have got to Rome, let alone win the 800. Prior to the Olympic Trials Ingram had more than proved her worth; more than earned her place and certainly would have placed better than eleventh; the best anyone else could manage.

I see Jonathan Winter is at it again; coaching fast swimmers I mean. This time he’s come up with a butterfly/freestyle swimmer called Tim Dawson. Dawson won the 100 butterfly on the first night of the Championship in 51.40. He beat the far more fancied Bell and Burmester. Whoever writes the meet reports for Swimming New Zealand made me laugh. Dawson’s win obviously came as a surprise and he beat swimmers from their treasured North Shore International Training Center. SNZ’s reporter clearly felt the loss needed to be explained. Dawson being faster was not going to be enough. Here is what their report said, “In the absence of champion Corney Swanepoel, who is swimming off strokes at this event, Dawson held off swim stars Daniel Bell and Moss Burmester to win the final in 51.40s.” Congratulations on a fine job Jonathan and thank you for taking the time out to travel to Wellington last week for my mother’s funeral. For those who may wonder at the connection, Jonathan attended the elementary school where my mother taught. I think she may have even taken him for some learn to swim lessons. If she did, she played a small part in producing a very good swimmer and successful swim coach.

I see in the news reports that swimmers from the North Shore International Training Center who swim slower than their best or who shockingly get beaten are excused because they are, “currently competing here while in full training load.” I’ve never understood all that. Either train or compete; don’t do both. But then I learned this trade at the table of Arthur Lydiard whose phrase for this nonsense was a cryptic, “Don’t try and run a four minute mile and around the Waitakeres at the same time.” It seems to me some coaches are more intent on proving how tough they are than winning a swimming race. Nothing else could explain swimming a full training load in the middle of the National Championships. Besides it shows scant respect for the nation’s premier swim meet. New Zealand has gone far too long without winning a medal in a world competition. This sort of decision is part of the reason why.

In other news, I recently got a call from a sports book publisher. They wanted to know if there was a possible sequel to my previous books, “Swim to the Top” and “Swimming – A Training Program”. I asked whether they would be interested in a book on “Sporting Parents Behaving Badly”. Over my years as a swim coach I’ve seen some pretty bizarre behavior; some of it illegal, much of it slanderous, all of it bad mannered and rude. The sad fact is that in every case the real victims have always been the children of the angry malcontents. Not once ever have I seen the child of a badly behaving parent achieve elite swimming success. That should not come as any sort of surprise. There are exceptions, but it is generally true that success in elite sport requires a certain type of honesty, a degree of loyalty and as the movies say, “But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!” There are some who do not teach their offspring these values. Instead they teach dishonesty, they preach hatred and instill deception. Most of all they demonstrate the fraud of never accepting responsibility for your behavior when you can blame someone else. Champions do not grow well in such an environment. To my surprise the publisher is most interested. In principle he agreed to publish the book. And so I have begun. The first 1500 words are tucked away – only 68500 to go. Fortunately a fair number of the remaining words have already been written in emails from the crazies. They can be the stars of their own show.

By David

One of the pools we use is in a less well-off neighborhood. I like it actually. It’s the sort of place you drive through dodging youths throwing 50 meter passes to each other, of front yards crowded with ladies sitting on plastic chairs discussing their children and old men preparing an evening grill. The local City of Delray authorities are doing a great and unheralded job of providing recreation here. Every afternoon the field behind the pool is filled with a hundred small nippers, dressed in pads and bright green football helmets going through their drills, preparing for the National Football League. The basketball courts beside the pool are home to their taller cousins shooting a thousand baskets and cheerleaders practicing for their call to come cheer for the Dallas Cowboys. Two tennis courts on the other side are littered with a hundred balls: the home to potential grunting Williams sisters. It’s busy, it’s active and it’s good to be a part of.

It has presented me with a problem though – swimmers whose parents simply cannot afford our pool and swimming fees. Already I have agreed to coach five local swimmers for free – on scholarship. And then yesterday I saw a young girl cruising the pool with the relaxed ease seldom seen in even the well coached. She’s tall and lean: the sort of build East German recruiters used to revere. The Pool Manager tells me she is eleven years old and doesn’t own a swim suit. She borrows one from the pool office each afternoon. There is no possibility her family could ever afford swimming fees. I have always been firmly of the view that no one should be denied the right to explore their talent because of a lack of money. Talent after all is not the sole prerogative of the well off. This girl is a classic example of that truth: just perhaps a female Cullen Jones waiting for her chance, needing a break.

There is a real need to expand the scholarship program beyond the five students I already support. The full cost of registration, coaching and pool fees is $1000 per annum: made up of $840 swimming fees and $160 pool fees. If there is anyone reading Swimwatch who can help by adopting this swimmer or others like her we would love to hear from you. Even the smallest donation makes the world of difference.

ADOPT A SWIMMER DONATION

Here’s the way it works

The swim team has established a Pompey Park Swimmer’s Account through PayPal. By following the instructions below, a donation of any amount can be made to the Pompey Park Swimmer’s Account. Each month the  Account will then pay the City of Delray Beach the monthly coaching fees and pool fees for swimmers from difficult circumstances that are selected for scholarship assistance. I will anonymously report on Swimwatch the amount of all assistance received.

Here’s how to help

Click on the “DONATION” button:

By David

On two or three occasions I have written articles about members of our Master’s program. The program is a pretty good one. There’s about fifty of us. We’ve had four US National Champions and last year one of them set two FINA Master’s World Records in the men’s 50 and 100 meters butterfly. For those who are interested, the times were 24.17 and 54.98. But more important than all that the team is made up of interesting, fun people that make the trip to training a ball.

Take Lesley for example. She’s a good swimmer who works her way through 5000 meters every morning. I haven’t been able to talk her into competing yet but when she does she could well become National Champion number five. Her early life is a compelling jumble of the eccentric and colorful. She’s actually done what the rest of us either make up or tell lies about. You don’t think so? Well how many of you have worked as an analyst in a major investment bank, been homeless and slept under bridges in Boston for six months, bought and sold Palm Beach gold, made tie dyed t-shirts to sell at rock concerts, been a bicycle courier through two New England winters, spent five years in a VW Kombi van following the Grateful Dead from concert to concert, nannied for the family of the Duke and Duchess of something in the London suburb of Chelsea, waited tables in an up-market Delray Beach restaurant or made a hundred rehab trips before finally giving the whole dangerous lifestyle away? They say your life experiences make you what you are. In Lesley’s case that’s true. She reflects the diverse complexity of her life. She’s interesting, loyal, compassionate and kind and, as I said before, a good swimmer as well. An old farming friend of mine in New Zealand used to say, “Judge your mates by whether you’d want them with you in the bush on a cold, wet night.” Lesley easily passes that test. Since I’ve been in the United States I’ve met one or two guys who really like to think they’re tough. They collect guns, drive jingoistic trucks, take their daughters to gun ranges, boast about their High School football feats and talk big about their country invading or bombing just about everybody. I wouldn’t have one of them anywhere near me in the bush on a dark night. That requires someone you can trust. You can trust Lesley though. But that’s not the problem. It’s more difficult than that – I’ve still got to get her into a bloody swimming race.

And then there is Master’s swimmer Martin. He was born and raised in a small town at the top of New Zealand’s South Island called Blenheim. It’s a lovely place. I once had a training camp there and for most of his life my father had a small farm just outside of town. My brother Pete was the Sport’s Editor of the town’s main newspaper and coached the local provincial (state) rugby team. Martin went to the same University as I did in New Zealand’s capital city, Wellington. The University’s brightest and best read politics and philosophy. For some reason, best known to himself, Martin chose to graduate in accountancy, imagine that, accountancy. Like many New Zealanders he then left New Zealand to see the world. Only Martin did it in a most unusual and exotic way. He took a gamble on his good looks and triathlon body and signed up with the 5th Avenue, New York, Ford modeling agency. One of our other swim team parents, Doug, is also on Ford’s books and we once had a team member who had been a finalist in the Miss. Venezuela contest. If nothing else, we sure as hell are the best looking master’s team in Florida. If you know anything about modeling you will be aware that Ford is probably the world’s leading agency. Here’s how their website describes themselves “One of the most recognized and respected agencies in the history of modeling, Ford impeccably represents a wide spectrum of models from supermodels like Jerry Hall and Carmen to hot faces like Chanel Iman and Lakshmi Menon.” Right now Ford represent only 62 models, two of whom are ranked in the world’s top 50 female models and seven ranked in the top 50 male models. Well, Martin was one of those. For ten years he wandered the world wearing designer clothes on the catwalks of Paris and Milan, having his photograph taken on the beach in Monte Carlo and on the side of Mount Fuji in Japan. I had dinner at his place two weeks ago and after a couple of bottles of wine he agreed to let me see his portfolio of photographs. It was bloody incredible; dozens of photographs of Martin dressed in the most expensive clothes, sometimes smiling, often with that slightly pouting scowl favored by the world’s best male models. God knows how he’s done it but after all that jet set lifestyle he is married, happily swimming on the Master’s team and the father of a daughter and son who swim on our USS team.

The team has a whole bunch of others who lead uncommonly interesting lives. There’s Kerry, three fingered Steve, Sarah, Matha, Peter, Ben, Noelle and a dozen others. We’ve run out of space in this article but I will tell you about that crew next time. You can see photographs of many of them on the master’s team website – aquacrest.org. In Lesley’s photograph she is being difficult and has a towel over her head. She says it’s because her hair looks awful when it’s wet. Martin has yet to be photographed for the team’s website. When we do we will try and get him into one of his Ford style poses. Let’s see if he’s still got it.